Stringy realization of a small and positive cosmological constant in dark bubble cosmology

Abstract

In this paper we construct a stringy embedding of the dark bubble model of an expanding 4D cosmology with the help of branes rotating in extra dimensions. The Universe rides a bubble which has nucleated in an unstable higher dimensional background. Our construction is therefore a string theoretical realization of Vilenkin's quantum cosmology. While the cosmological constant vanishes at lowest order, loop corrections predicted by the weak gravity conjecture can induce a phenomenologically viable value. The model predicts the existence of large extra dimensions compatible with observational constraints, and we note a possible connection with the dark dimension proposal.